Quote of the Week

"Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it." ~ John C. Maxwell

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Blossom and Grow

Today I'm going to share how to make a flower with 6 - 3 inch pieces of double sided ribbon (meaning different pattern on each side), 1 inch circle, flower center - acrylic, felt, paper or all 3, brad and glue dots. Optional items - stapler, cotton ball and alcohol ink. I learned this at a local store that has since closed down but I am thankful for the many projects inspired by them and the fun that was always had at crops there.

I will apologize now for the quality of the photos - it's hard to work the camera and demo what you are meaning...well at least for me.

To start find some double sided ribbon you like - this has a lovely blue/brown argyle pattern on one side and is solid brown on the other. You will need 6 pieces that measure 3 inches each.

You will now need to detemine what color you want the center of the flower. I have shown you both ways but I went with having the solid as my center. Place a glue dot on one end of the color you want to in the center (brown in my case) and fold the other end over making sure that the same color is facing you when done. Then simple crease the top of the loop to have the opposite color showing. There won't be much...

I should have taken this picture prior to making my petals but better late than never right? Below are all the products you will need. Please note my flower base is a 1 inch circle I punched out of packaging I had in my recycle box. I didn't show the glue dots here but you can also use staples to form the loops of the petals and to attach them to the base. I found glue dots easier by far.

I now put 3 glue dots on my 1 inch circle which covered almost all of it as I used the large. You could also put one glue dot on the back of each petal (in my case that would have been the patterned side). You then will place them around the circle - I don't take too much care getting them perfect as I rather like a bit of variation between flowers.

You can leave the arcylic flower clear or you can give it a bit of color with alcohol ink in a complimentary color (stream worked well for me). There are other options that would work but I just like playing with alcohol ink. Because it was a small area I just used a drop on a cotton ball and dabbed it in a random pattern until it was what I wanted. No needed to set aside until it dries as it was ready to go by the time I had taken the picture and put away my ink.

I placed the largest flower first and used it as a guide to make a small hole in the center of the main flower base for the brad. I had my exacto knife handy but anything with a sharp point would do and if you preplan you could use your Crop-a-dile to punch a small hole.

You then simply layer largest to smallest to finish your flower then place a brad in the center and your flower is complete. The best part of this is you can make custom embellishments using ribbon found elsewhere on your project and punch paper flowers out of paper you used and layer them. If you use paper flowers all the same size I would curl some of the petals slightly to give dimension.